More post-game quotes

“Tonight’s game is such a grind, totally different from (Thursday) night’s game, and I thought as the game wore on, especially in the second period, I thought we started taking control of it. We still didin’t develop a lot of offense, but I thought we started taking control of it.”

“It doesn’t matter who you’re playing, these are important points. I thought they played hard. I thought they defended hard, and it could have gone either way here. So I don’t get too deep into, ‘Should we beat them.’ … it’s not the way the league works. There’s so much parity in the league, it’s a tough night every night. And tonight was no different. So we’re very fortunate to come away with two points.

“I thought, speaking on our team, a big part of our meeting was defending the front of our net better, stopping in front of our net, getting back to blocking shots. I don’t think we gave them much. Hank makes a huge save after Dubi hits the post in a short-handed situation, but I think we really worked hard on our defense. That’s something we really wanted to get back to.”

“I look at one clip where Michael Sauer, we defend the play well in our end, on Brian Boyle’s scoring chance. We defend it, we’re all there, and Michael Sauer’s up the ice, he makes a great offensive, instinctive play, holding onto the puck, letting it develop, and Brian Boyle ends up with a great chance. That was defense first, and you create your offense. That’s what we’re trying to be more consistent at.”

On Avery’s concentration lapsing:

“You always want to stir it up, huh?”

The question was then changed.

“I changed the mode of your question, I think. Listen. Sean was effective. When we lose him, and the way that he’s playing right now, it hurts him and it hurts the team. I think Sean knows that. But I think he bounced back and he had some effective shifts.

“I’m not going to look for people to pick fights with me on Sean Avery. Sean Avery has grinded through it. He’s been on the fourth line, where I thought he should have been for the way he was playing at times, but he’s kept his patience, he’s worked hard and he is where he should be right now. We have to live with some of that stuff, and he’ll learn from it. He’ll learn from it.”

On Staal’s PPG:

“It’s a great shot and Frolov does a nice job there screening the goalie. But it’s a play we’re trying to get our team to use more frequently.”

“I thought Step made the play. He kept his patience with it, let it develop, everybody came to him and he dished it to Marc.

On whether he expects more offense from Staal:

“That’s part of it, where we want to give him some time there. He’s had many conversations with me where he wants to add there. Last year he doubled his points from two years ago, and slowly we want to give that to hhim. That’s a big part. He signs a congract and there’s some responsibility that comes with it, and we certainly want to give him some opportunity to play on both sides of hte puck. And we’re slowly going to try to develop him there.

“He reads the rush very well as far as when to join. So I hope that gives him confidence, and he deserves an opportunity there. We’ve been up and down with that thing there. I think it will help his defense, too. A year ago I wouldn’t have said that. But I think hes mature enough to know, his mainstay is to defend, but he wants to add that to his game.”

Boogaard, he said, got cut by a high stick and was stitched up.

On Del Zotto fighting it a bit on the PP:

“A little bit. That’s why we’re going to try some different people there. By no means are we going to lose Michael Del Zotto, but we want to try some different things there. I thought Stepan made a great play on Staalsie’s goal, keeping his patience, shifting people. It’s something we’ve been working on.

“You know, Michael’s been at the controls for a while. It hasn’t been consistent. So we’ll use some different people there to try to get some consistency on it. Again, it’s a young guy in Michael that fights it a bit there. But he’ll rebound. He’ll rebound and he’ll get some more opportunities.”

On whether he looks at the standings:

“At times, yeah. I looked at them last night, not so much the standings but I looked what the West did to the East n the games last night. I think we got a lot of help last night with Western Conference teams beating the East.

“I have a good idea where we’re at. What we’ve gone through so far this year and how the team’s coming along, I like where we’re at. I’m not exactly sure as far as the points. But I know we’re climbing. These were important games. These were two games that we knew were going to be hard-fought, and I think we took a step in the right direction in beating this club twice. So now we’ve just got to skate tomorrow and get ready for an Ottawa team that we feel we’re going to be fighting against all year to get in (to the playoffs).”

On this game:

“I thought we played well. From a coach’s standpoint, I thought we defended much better than last night. Our high man was better, though we still had some breakdowns. I thought we were harder in our end zone. I thought we had better sticks tonight in our end zone, which we didn’t have last night. We defended the front of our net much better. Offensively, we’re still shooting pucks wide. We need to capitalize and get that next goal. But, hey, I have no problems with the way we played tonight, coming back to back, and no matter where (the Islanders are) in the standings, they’re always screwed-up games when the Rangers and the Islanders play. So I thought we handled ourselves very well.”

I was at the game tonight…that is why I was missing in action on the best Byfuglien blog about the NYR….you boneheads are great folks! Carp, I will meet you one these days.

a few observations about the win:

-Staal again scores a big goal. Staal doesn’t score that many goals but, when he does they are usually awesome individual plays or clutch game winners. Already 2 this year. And who can forget the one in 2008 versus the Devils in the playoffs.http://www.nhl.com/ice/recap.htm?id=2007030144

-Gaborik made some awfully lazy back-checks last night that looked Zherdev-like. Henrik and the cross bar bailed him out. Gaby can be quite lazy defensively sometimes and he can’t do that in a 1-0 game. That is honestly my only complaint about him.

-Avery was again a factor tonight. Despite having 14 PIM he played 11:57. Awesome.

-The Callahan hit was clean, although it was high and hard. Not a cheap shot.

-Stepan is blossoming before our eyes. We need his Mom to come to more games so he score goals.

-Maybe Froloaf can become useful as a screen on the PP? Interesting…

-NYI -Jon Sim is a chump. Another guy who should probably be in AHL or ECHL and would have no NHL contract if it wasn’t for the Fishsticks. Grabner really looks like he’ll be a good player. Tavares was invisible. Aside from having a few guys, this team is essentially just the Bridgeport Sound Tigers A team.

I’m not sure if anyone mentioned it, but I couldn’t believe the similarity between the play where the Rangers broke down on Roloson in the 2nd period, hit the post/crossbar & the puck ricochets back into center ice where the Isles almost scored… & the play that ended Game One of the ’94 Stanley Cup Finals in OT. I believe it was Leetch who took the shot that hit the crossbar & bounced out, creating a Canucks three on one the other way, resulting on a goal off the stick of Greg Adams. Not a good memory!

Watching these two games I found myself perplexed by something. These two teams seem to play very much alike. Their patterns are almost similar, they seem to attack in the same way, and also their defensive styles are almost images of one another. I must admit however that as a team they seem to be more skilled in passing than Rangers.

Wow. look, Idk how long some of you have been Rangers fans but all I can tell you is that if you’ve suffered through the ups and downs with this team over the last 15-20 years like I have then you don’t have the nerve to critisize right now. We finally have a young talented team that is getting better before our eyes and winning games. Sure, there are growing pains from game to game. And no they aren’t a ‘shoe in for the Cup Finals’ which even if they were I’m sure some of you would still find something to complain about.

The big picture is what’s important. And they’re going in the right direction. You can punch the walls of your mother’s basements and moan and groan about “It’s just the Islanders. It’s just the Oilers. this guy’s weak on the puck. that guy didn’t make the right defensive play” until you’re blue in the face or your lap top batter dies. The people who don’t have their heads up their Carcillo holes know that the big picture is important and while our team (much like the other 29 in the league) isn’t a shoe in or flawless- they’re a lot better than they used to be and they’re doing things they couldnt do in the past while giving us some pretty entertaining hockey to watch most nights. So enjoy it because it could be much much worse. One step at a time kids.

As a longtime Rangers fan, but really a diehard who follows anything and everything Rangers 365 days a year for about 6 years now, I have mild expectations for this team. We haven’t fielded a cup caliber team in 15 years (minus all the morons who jumped on our bandwagon after we signed Gomez/Drury).

For this team and all the others, my motto has always been, you gotta win the games you’re supposed to win. When we play the Isles, (now) Devils, Oilers, Leafs, Sabres, Flames, we have to win those games. If you can play a little better than .500 against everyone else, you’re in the playoffs.

I don’t care if its ugly, I don’t care if we scrape by…if we get those 2 points every time we play one of those bottomfeeding teams, than this team is on the right track.

ddeb – Regarding Avery, he has had better games offensively but, man was he a pest last night. It started in pre-game warmups and didn’t end. He doesn’t need to score to be effective. He was getting at Isles players. His 10 min misconduct was questionable, he must have said something to the ref. He looked good on the line with Gaby and EC, again displaying his great cycling ability behind the net…I just thought it was impressive that he got 14 PIM and still managed to play about 12 minutes…

Not so good morning all…..I just learned that our dear friend Linda Fozzy has lost her beloved husband Tom. Some of you met him at last spring at the boneheads fest and surely remember him as a great guy. I know I do. I don’t know what happened, and I sure hope Fozzy isn’t mad at my letting you all know, but I think she’d sure like to know that her bonehead family is thinking of her and sending her love. RIP Tom Vecere.